When Miki Jones is pulled from her life, pulled through time and space into
some kind of game—her carefully controlled life spirals into chaos. In the
game, she and a team of other teens are sent on missions to eliminate the Drau,
terrifying and beautiful alien creatures. There are no practice runs, no
training, and no way out. Miki has only the guidance of secretive but
maddeningly attractive team leader Jackson Tate, who says the game isn’t really
a game, that what Miki and her new teammates do now determines their survival,
and the survival of every other person on this planet. She laughs. He doesn’t.
And then the game takes a deadly and terrifying turn.

Beauty is pointless when no one’s looking.Brianna Paxton has been invisible to guys since the eighth grade. She’s pretty enough, it’s just that no one bothers to look. There’s almost nothing that can’t be explained with science, and Brianna has a theory: she’s missing the pheromone that attracts people to one another. Brianna’s theory is shot to hell in one frozen, silver moment, when time stops and Blake Williams not only sees her, he recognizes something inside her that she’s been hiding from even herself.Before Brianna fully understands who and what she is, she accidentally binds her soul to Blake. Forced to find a way to reconcile forbidden love and her bloody heritage, Brianna discovers that there’s nothing pointless about her, and Blake may be in the most danger of all.

MY READING JOURNEY:

Page 33: “Oh. That wasn’t insta-love. I was frightened. And then he threatened her and it was like, PHEW disaster averted.”

Page 148: “Girl: Yes, insta-love, it’s beautiful! Guy: NOOOOOO! I probably shouldn’t be giggling, but Blake is totally spitting in the face of insta-love. I’m sorry Brie, but I’m on his side!”

Page 200: “I’m not sure how all of the sudden they’re teaching Brie to fight, but Micah and Jeremy are the most hysterical things so I forgive it.”

NOW AT 100% COMPLETE: 4 1/2 stars

Refreshing mythology? Check. Great, relatable heroine? Check. Sexy guy? Check. Sexy, sexy romance? Check. Fast pacing? Check. Supernatural awesomeness? Check. Not to mention I laughed out loud AND could barely update Goodreads because I was like READREADREAD. PLUS, Blake totally spit in the face of insta-love. One of my new favorites of the year. Follow the link to make sure to add it to your TBR pile! Can’t wait to gush about this stuff and more in my review, coming in August!

Guillaume: For five hundred years I’ve existed as a gargoyle. Perched atop an old Montreal church, I’ve watched idly as humanity wanders by. With the witch Marguerite gone, there is no one left to protect, nothing to care about. I never planned to feel again. But then a girl released me from my stone restraints, allowing me to return as a seventeen-year-old human boy. I must find out all I can about this girl’s power . . . Aude: Getting attacked twice in as many days is strange in itself, but even stranger is the intriguing guy I keep running into. There’s something so familiar about him, like a primal drum rhythm from my dreams. But spending time together only raises more question-about my heritage, a native Mohawk prophecy . . . and an unearthly magic threatening our city…

MY READING JOURNEY

Page 11: “Gargoyles come to life because a girl speaks a Native American chant in Montreal Canada. Well color me interested.”

Page 14: “I just realized I have no idea how to pronounce either of the MCs names. Oh this could get awkward.”

Page 92: “Do you know how refreshing it is where you don’t know EVERY which way they can twist the mythology? Because sometimes I just have these moments with original books and I just want to cry with happiness.”

Page 335: “AHA! There is the action that just won’t stop. Theeere we go.”

Page 355: “FINITO! …finished. I mean finished.”

NOW AT 100% COMPLETE: 3 stars

This, you guys, is a fantastically refreshing world. Gargoyles? French witches? Native American shamans? When was the last time you read about those all together? The world building in this gets an A+, even if that did seem to be the focus of the book. Very little happened until that last fourth that wasn’t exposition. Some people like that; that’s just not for me. I’m an action girl, and BOY did I get my action in the end! If you’re looking for something NEW and DIFFERENT to read, this is the book for you. Just don’t expect the pacing to fly at high speeds. When my real review goes up, we’ll talk more about that ending and the characterization!

You may be asking yourself, what in the world is a teaser review? It’s NOT a full book review, is what that is. I got this book from NetGalley, but it won’t be published until Sept 8, 2012, and I CANNOT wait months to talk to you guys about it. So here we go!

Running from her traitorous best friend and her estranged father, graffiti artist Beth Bradley is looking for sanctuary. What she finds is Urchin, the ragged and cocky crown prince of London’s mystical underworld. Urchin opens Beth’s eyes to the city she’s never truly seen-where vast spiders crawl telephone wires seeking voices to steal, railwraiths escape their tethers, and statues conceal an ancient priesthood robed in bronze.

But it all teeters on the brink of destruction. Amid rumors that Urchin’s goddess mother will soon return from her 15-year exile, Reach, a malign god of urban decay, wants the young prince dead. Helping Urchin raise an alleyway army to reclaim his skyscraper throne, Beth soon forgets her old life. But when her best friend is captured, Beth must choose between this wondrous existence and the life she left behind.

MY READING JOURNEY

7% complete: “Not sure how I feel about the tense changing with the POV. However…this book reads like YA fantasy pre-Twilight. Not sure if I like it or not.”

18% complete: “I am so utterly confused. Beth. You just signed up in blood to fight a battle with/for a boy you JUST MET. I have absolutely no idea how that moved that fast. *I* did not understand a thing he just “explained” and I’ve been reading from his POV.”

20% complete: “This does NOT read like a first in a series. I feel like I’m missing SO MUCH.”

36% complete: “Oh. So in the computer copy I have, they show splits were the POV/tense changes in a chapter. But guys, really?
Also, did we just blow over a mention of Pen being raped? Because I can’t even tell if that was rape or sex she participated in without enjoying and that makes me ridiculously angry.”

38% complete: “Are sections of this book MISSING? I’m now legitimately curious. It’s either that or I’m missing something BIG. Multiple somethings big.”

61% complete: “And just when I think it’s getting better, that goes and happens. Aren’t they, like, 15? Because that was just awkward and out of place.”

76% complete: “I have all of the feelings about this book.”

NOW AT 100% COMPLETE: 3 1/2 stars

THIS WORLD. GUYS. IT MAKES ME DROOL. Literally. I slobber like a dog. (Okay, that’s not literally. Wait. None of it is. Never mind.) But I did drool! Sorta! SO REFRESHING. SO NEAT. I LOVE. The updates become less towards the end for a REASON. If you wait out the first half, the second half is spectacular. Yeah, I had my issues, but GUYS. There is so much refreshing, original potential here I could dance. The description of war, it’s consequences and it’s harshness is done to near perfection. I can’t wait to share my full review with you guys in August!